Last night
the frogs were croaking.
Snow is falling.
I wonder whether a fixed ‘content word’ count would be a way of providing a clear formal model for haiku in English. i.e. count the nouns, verbs and adjectives. This would come in at six. So would “old pond – frog jumps – sound of water”, pretty much however you translate it. “little snail – inch by inch, climb – Mount Fuji!”, comes in as five in Japanese (katatsuburi soro-soro nobore fuji no yama), something like “snail slowly-slowly climb mount fuji” maybe. And many have even fewer. Hmm. Maybe not.